Thursday, October 11, 2012

We all know that the dark ages are upon us again
here in Africa. It is almost like a dark blanket that is slowly surrounding the
land. People who know absolutely nothing of the core values of evangelical
Christianity—the new birth, repentance and saving faith, justification and
holiness, etc.—have hijacked evangelical Christianity in Africa. Even the term
"born again" is being peddled without an iota of the meaning that
Jesus had in mind when he used the phrase in his talk with Nicodemus. These are
dark days indeed.

Once upon a time in Zambia, in the 1970s and early
1980s, you could go to very much any English-speaking evangelical church on
Sunday and expect to attend a Bible study and hear faithful preaching of God's
word. You may have been a little uncomfortable with some aspects of their
worship. You may have also disagreed with some doctrinal assumptions during the
preaching. However, you could not miss the fact that here was a sincere effort
at arriving at the meaning of the text of Scripture and applying it to the
hearers—both in the Bible studies and the sermons. You also heard an appeal for
repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. They may not have
dotted your "i"s and crossed your "t"s as you do, but you
still went home edified.

George Whitefield preached "You must be born again"
during the Great Evangelical Awakening of the 18th Century

That is now very rare. In most so-called evangelical
churches in Zambia today, there are no Bible studies and you cannot last to the
end of their worship service if what you went for was spiritual
edification. How many of our people are being drawn to churches primarily
because they have been falsely promised to be cured of AIDS, get promotion at
work, get more money, etc.? How many of our people are giving stashes of cash
to so-called servants of God who are in fact nothing more than religious
fraudsters? How many of our people now think that worship is dancing to very
loud music that competes favourably with the rhumba maestros of the Congo? How
many of our preachers think that preaching is shouting nice sounding platitudes
through a microphone at the top of their voice with an American or Nigerian
accent? This is what church has become.

I liken this delusion to the days prior to the
Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. People flooded the churches but it
was all for the wrong reasons. They were deceived and spellbound by a priest
craft that claimed abilities they did not have but which the people craved
after. Superstition reigned supreme in the church. The people were poor but
they were promised various blessings if they could only give their remaining
money to the church. Out of these funds majestic church edifices were built and
the church's top leadership lived like kings and princes. Is this not what is
happening in the name of evangelical Christianity today? Or am I the only one
who is seeing these things?

Such "dancing queens" are now the height of "worship" in churches

The result of all this is that we have
"Protestant" churches on literally every street but the evangelical
faith is totally absent. In fact these churches have become dens of iniquity.
Church pastors are impregnating young girls in their churches, getting them to
abort, agreeing with their parents not to spill the beans for some undisclosed
huge amounts of hush-money, and their spouses and church leaders know about all
this. As the pulpit has gone, so has gone the pew. Hardly anyone is thirsting
and hungering after righteousness. Immoral living is rife. Church discipline is
rare. Those who know about this rottenness are looking at the church from
outside and pinching their nostrils in disgust. We have the numbers alright but
the salt has lost its saltiness—and we know it.

Come on; let us be honest. We all know that the
so-called prosperity gospel, which is in vogue in evangelicalism today, is
heresy. We all know that the only guys becoming stinking rich are the preachers
to whom the blind followers are giving their money. The followers themselves
are still in abject poverty. It is nothing but religious fraud. We also all
know that 99% of the claims to physical healing by our faith healers are false.
We all have relatives who would be alive today if they had not been told they
were cured and so should not take medication for their sickness. These men are
murderers. This is not Conrad Mbewe being malicious and making up stories.
These are all well-known facts.

The tragedy is not that all this is happening. The
disaster is the silence about all this from those who are supposed to provide
spiritual guidance to the masses. In Zambia, and in Africa at large,
evangelical leaders who have worked their way up the ecclesiastical ladder are
holding hands with religious fraudsters and thus they cannot speak about this
engulfing evil. They would rather throw stones at political leaders out there
than address the Trojan horse within evangelicalism. They would rather tell the
world to stop being worldly than tell those who are raping the church from
within to stop it. And yet in the light of this spiritual tsunami, the silence
is criminal.

The problem with this current silence is that the
younger generation who are coming into evangelical circles now think that what
they are seeing is a viable and alternative form of evangelical Christianity
when it is not. They have no clue that only recently believers got together in
church for serious Bible study, that worship had dignity and awe, and that
sermons were Bible-based, Christ-centred, and aimed at spiritual conversion.
Due to our silence, our upcoming preachers are seeing filling your church
membership roll with goats rather than sheep and driving expensive cars at the
expense of poor parishioners as the sign of pastoral success. They have no clue
that it was only recently when pastors stood out in society for their true
godly servanthood. Today’s evangelical leaders are misleading a whole
generation of innocent souls by their silence.

Martin Luther who said, "Enough is enough" in the 16th Century

In the days of the prophet Malachi, religion in
Israel had reached its lowest ebb. The Temple was still full of activity—with
all kinds of sacrifices being offered at the altar. Yet, the true worship of
God was dying. Those who came to the place of worship were defrauding God and
the priests were allowing this. Men were unfaithful to their wives and
divorcing at will, and the priests kept quiet about it. God finally put the
blame where it ought to have been—at the feet of the priests. He said, “The
lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction
from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have
turned aside from the way” (Malachi 2:7-8). God finally wanted them to just
shut the Temple doors and send everyone away! Their silence misrepresented him.
They did not care that his greatness was obscured.

Once upon a time, a generation of God's people saw spiritual
decay and said, "Enough is enough!" and out of this protest was born
the Protestant Reformation. In yet another generation, when liberalism had
invaded the Protestant church and was killing its very life, a generation of
God's people again said, "Enough is enough!" and out of that protest
was born the Evangelical movement of the 18th century. In the light of the
darkness that is once again upon us, with churches becoming no more than
witchdoctors' dens, is it not time for today's evangelicals to say,
"Enough is enough"? How can we be silent in the light of this
engulfing darkness? Surely, our evangelical silence must be criminal.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

This blog post should have
been written and posted last week, but stress related to my visa wars reduced my
mental creative powers to zero. I arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand, a few
hours ago and suddenly my mental energies have been restored. So, before I get
carried away with preaching among the Kiwis, let me quickly get this post out
of the way.

I have some good news for
Zambia's Christian business community! Evergreen Christian Bookstore will be
hosting a whole day Christian Business Seminar this coming Saturday - 6th
October, 2012 - at Dream Valley Lodge. The theme will be "Christians Conducting Business in a Secular World" and the speaker will be Bheki
Macwele, from Swaziland.

Bheki Macwele in his office at his liquified petroleum gas (LPG) company

Let me say something about
the speaker. I have known Bheki Macwele for many years now and have always been
encouraged by his enthusiasm for matters related to the kingdom of God. In
fact, initially, I thought he was a pastor! We often met at conferences in
South Africa. If I was the one preaching, I'd notice a glow on his face as he
listened attentively to my preaching. Discussions around meals would soon show
that he not only understood the sermons but was internalising them with great
perception.

I noticed that Bheki usually
attended conferences in the company of an older man (whom I later discovered to
be his church pastor). I also noticed that at the end of each conference Bheki
would purchase many of the books that were being sold and haul them back to
Swaziland. Who was this man? It was not until I was invited to Swaziland that I
got to appreciate who he really was.

Gas cylinders at Bheki's liquified petroleum gas (LPG) company

There, I discovered that
Bheki had been used of the Lord to play a crucial role in the establishment
from scratch of Manzini Fellowship Church - a church playing a key role in the
preservation of conservative evangelical Christianity in Swaziland (click here).
He was one of the church elders there. The books he was hauling were now a
massive library in his church. He wanted the young people in his church to be
exposed to the best of sound and solid Christian books on the planet. What an
investment into Swaziland's spiritual future!

I also discovered that Bheki
was an astute Christian businessman. At a time when very few Swazis were in the
upper echelons of business, he had risen to chief executive of Swaziland's
branch of the multinational oil company, Shell. Having reached the top, he had
since retired and taken over one section of Shell's business, which they wanted
to dispose of - the selling of gas. He grew this into Swaziland's second
largest gas provider. He had also bought two farms and was rearing about
100,000 chickens at a time. In chatting with him, I found that he had his
fingers into a number of other smaller businesses.

Part of the 100,000 chicks being reared at Bheki's chicken farm

All this growth in Bheki's
business has been happening while Swaziland has been going through very
difficult economic times, as most of you will know. It has also been happening
while Bheki has been fully involved in growing a Reformed evangelical church -
probably the only one of its kind in Swaziland. May I also add, that all this
was happening while Bheki was nursing his first wife who for many years was
suffering from a rare medical condition that left her on a wheel chair...until
she died in 2004. He has since also lost his first born son. Yet, Bheki's joy is
contagious. When you are with him, you would not think he has gone through all
this. I've found in Bheki an example of a truly tested and loving husband and
father.

It was this exposure that
made me immediately conclude, we must get Bheki to Zambia! The Zambian
Christian business community needs to be exposed to good role models. We have
too many bad examples around us that I would not be surprised if it has now
been taken for granted that in Africa you cannot be a business person and a
strong Christian at the same time. that is why I am so enthused by the topic he
has chosen to address us on - "Christians Conducting Business in a Secular
World." We need to learn from men such as Bheki that it is not just
possible but that it is incumbent upon us as Christians to do so in a godly
way. It is challenging, but it can be done. It will be hard, but the joy we
will know in glorifying God in this way will far surpass the pain of the
hardships.

The kind of chalets found at Dream Valley Lodge

Dream Valley needs no
introduction. It is owned by a Christian couple, the Swilimbas, and we have
used it for previous seminars in order to showcase their achievement and to
support their business. The Swilimbas have built this business from scratch.
They got what was once virgin forest and have turned into an amazing amusement
park, conference centre, and lodge. They have really subdued their little
corner of the earth. Come and see! We will be the first to use their newly
constructed beautiful conference hall. If you are not in business, at least
tell those who are to get out to Dream Valley this Saturday. It will truly be a
seminar worth remembering for many years to come.